Category: Politics

Leafnet (by way of Boing Boing) is a new approach to distributed politics. I really like it. The basic idea: check the site, print out a leaflet, post it in a bunch of places. It distributes the work of pamphletting across everyone who’s interested in the subject.

Very nice concept. Now he needs to tie it to an alert system. It’d also be more effective if it was oriented towards a specific set of political issues. If you expect people to pay attention to alerts asking ‘em to leaflet, they need to know what to expect, and that’s even more important if people have to go to the site to see what new campaigns there are.

Still, it’s an interesting direction. We’ll see if anyone picks up on it in the US.

We have some interesting stuff from a DoD news briefing delivered yesterday by Major General John F. Sattler, USMC. He’s the commander of the Combined Joint Task Force Horn of Africa.

This task force is carrying out operations in support of the war on terrorism in, obviously, the Horn of Africa region — that’s Kenya, Somalia, Ethiopia, Sudan, Eritrea, Djibouti and Yemen. It’s about 1,500 people large, including command staff.

The excerpt that interested me is as follows:

Q: General, this is Jim Mannion of AFP. I was wondering if you could describe the scope of the al Qaeda presence in Yemen up in the port area along Saudi Arabia; andalso, whether al Qaeda has been using Saudi territory as a haven and whether the Saudis have been cooperative in pursuing them? Thank you.

Maj. Gen. Sattler: The countries that we have responsibility for, obviously Yemen borders Saudi Arabia, but we are in no — we are not — our specific Combined Joint Task Force is not working directly with the Saudi government. Now, we’ve received information and intelligence across the entire inter-agency process so that we do get intelligence from other parts of the world that we’re able to take and fuse with our analysts on board the ship here to help build that jigsaw puzzle that now indicates who’s moving where and when.

Not sure what to make of that; I’m not a professional DoD watcher or anything. One way to read it is the slightly paranoid “Yeah, they’re not getting jack from the Saudis.” Another way to read it is the slightly placid “OK, so the Saudis are cooperating and everyone’s following procedure and they get the info as needed.” Your guess is probably as good as mine as to which is accurate, if either.

Still, it bears watching. He didn’t say “We’re getting intelligence from the Saudis through the inter-agency process.”

You know, I’m getting a little weary of hearing people tell me what the war on Iraq is about.

It’s not about the oil. If this were all a big plot to ensure Bush’s friends get their hands on oil, there are better places to go. There’s a crisis in Venezuela at the moment (link subject to change with time), and that’s in our hemisphere. Venezuela produces as much oil as Iraq. If it were about oil, we’d be heading down to South America to clean up that issue.

It was at least partially about oil in the Gulf War; the United States needed to head off any possibility that Iraq would take the Saudi oil fields. That was then. This is now. Find a new anti-war slogan; “No blood for oil” misses the point.

It’s not about terrorism. There aren’t any visible links. Sure, maybe the Iraqis are clever enough to back Al Qaeda without any signs visible by anyone other than US intelligence, but it’s unlikely, particularly given the clashing objectives of bin Laden and Hussein. Look at it this way: it’s becoming increasingly clear that there’s still extensive Saudi money behind Al Qaeda. How come half the journalists in the free world can turn up evidence of that, but nobody can find proof that Hussein supports Al Qaeda?

It’s not about weapons of mass destruction. We are not attacking North Korea, despite the fact that they don’t have a nuclear program yet. They may have two nuclear weapons; that doesn’t mean that, given a strategy of preemptive nonproliferation, we shouldn’t keep them from getting the means to get more nuclear weapons. Two is bad; unlimited is very bad. There’s a qualitative difference between ‘em.

(By the by, the FAS reported the possibility of two North Korean nukes in 1999. This isn’t some random idea the Bush administration invented.)

But hey, forget about North Korea. What about Iran, which is quite possibly a nuclear power? Iran doesn’t even have UN inspectors; anything could be happening there.

Iraq is the best place for the US to exert influence in the Middle East. I’m not gonna get into the morality or lack thereof of this. I’d just like to see people stop pretending it’s anything else. There are going to be side benefits. Iraq sponsors terrorists other than Al Qaeda, of course. Iraq would love to get nuclear weapons, and it would be nice to keep that from happening, yes.

However, the important thing is that the US will wind up with its biggest presence ever in the Middle East. That, too, is something one can argue about for ages. Will it cause even greater resentment? Is it worth it in the long term? Lots of different opinions about that.

Regardless, though, it’s good to remember a couple of things. Bush isn’t doing this cause he’s nuts or bloodthirsty; he also isn’t doing it as an altruistic exercise for the good of the world. It is a calm, considered extension of American power into an important geopolitical area. It reduces the necessity to rely on Israel, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia when conducting policy in the region.

Argue about that, but geeze, enough of the “no blood for oil” and enough of the 9/11 rhetoric and enough of the weapons of mass destruction.

I’ve written earlier about the new mission for US Special Ops forces, so since Rumsfeld held a briefing yesterday regarding the U.S. Special Operations Command, I figure hey, may as well talk about it some more.

Let’s see. They’re increasing the budget, which strikes me as a rational step, particularly given these criticisms.

He’s giving Special Operations Command a supported command role, which means “the Special Operations Command will have the tools it will need to plan and execute missions in support of the global war on terror.” The Washington Times claims that this implies authority to plan their own assassinations, but that’s kind of unclear to me; if it’s true, then any command in a supported command role had that authority previously. Mind you, I’m still of the opinion that even Bush shouldn’t be authorizing assassinations as an instrument of US policy, but that’s me.

Rumsfeld blithely dodges the question, “is America’s military now capable, if asked, to go to Baghdad and win decisively?” Tsk. Instead, he says “we will recruit, organize, train, equip and exercise so that we will be capable, as a country, of, in two conflicts, near-simultaneously but not completely simultaneous, be capable of winning decisively; that is to say, occupying a country if necessary, and in another case, swiftly defeating and preventing an attack on an ally or friend.” That’s really interesting. Again: “not completely simultaneous.” Also, not two occupations. Next time someone says we can prevent a North Korean invasion at the same time as we invade Iraq, you can tell ‘em Rumsfeld says they’re wrong.

Also: “General Myers and his team […] have come to a conclusion that in fact we are better able to meet our current strategy than we were two years ago capable of meeting our prior strategy.” Which, I dunno, maybe a slip of the tongue? But he’s not saying we can do it, he’s just saying we’re closer to being able to do it. Note that this in itself is praiseworthy; progress towards a goal counts in the plus column. Just let’s be clear about the difference between progress and accomplishment.

He also mentions the tabletop strategies, which may or may not be discredited. It’s OK to go back and try again in a war game, but it’s a bad idea to artificially limit what the opposition can do.

Moving on, Rumsfeld discusses South Korean anti-US demonstrations: “And if you get demonstrators, a handful of demonstrators — I don’t know, what is it? — 10, 100, 1,000 — whatever the number may be at any given time, is that a good reflection of what the view of the country is? I don’t think it is, myself.” Tens of thousands, actually.

Fun times. It’s worth keeping an eye on the briefings; they post ‘em over at the DoD Web site. Get your news unfiltered. For god’s sake, don’t take my word for it — there’s a world of original sources out there.

Oliver Willis has AIM alerts going now. Slick. He mentions in email to me that he’s working on other messaging systems as well; I’d forgotten MSN Messenger as a player in cell phone messaging, but I shouldn’t, since Microsoft wants to be a player in the cell phone OS market.

I’m wondering if anyone’s going to pick up on this for the local elections in 2004. 2002 saw very little Internet action on the election front, even if you count Tara Sue Grubb’s weblog. I’ll be keeping an eye out for more proactive uses of the technology; looks like Tara Sue will as well.

And as long as I’m obsessing about this, I might as well pick up Smart Mobs.

Glenn Reynolds slips into the surreal, saying it’s a good thing the South didn’t win the Civil War because then the United States would look like Europe. Yeah, and I seem to recall there was some other issue involved, too. Can’t put my finger on it, though.

Oliver Willis (blogging maniac) is already pushing the SMS thang, in his unofficial John Edwards weblog. Mind you, it’s one guy, but one guy can have a lot of leverage these days.

Looks like he’s using Upoc to do mass SMS messaging. I guess it’s a start, but he’s going to need to get email and AIM into the mix, too. The legendary Randomness observes, in response to my thoughts earlier today, that “there just isn’t the SMS culture in the States that there is in South Korea, Japan, or Europe.” Truth. But I think it’s gonna be email and AIM on mobile devices that makes it happen in the US.

We don’t have an SMS culture. We do have a serious instant messaging culture. We’re gonna see widespread AIM/email on cell phones before we see a lot of American kids using SMS. The free Nokia I got for signing up with T-Mobile (the 3390) came with AIM built in, so I think it’s hit the commodity point.

Anyhow, I signed up for his group, not so much because I’m an Edwards supporter but because I want to see how it gets used.

If South Korean elections can be swung by smart mobs, what’s that say about US politics? Mind you, the voter turnout was a mere 70%, which is the lowest ever for a South Korean presidental election. Conventional wisdom says that Roh Moo-hyun benefited from text messaging because it helped him get out the vote, but the low turnout seems to contraindicate that. Possibly the turnout would have been slimmer if not for the smart mobs? Hard to say.

Anyhow, here’s the prescription for whichever US party wants to use cell phones effectively. First, don’t telemarket. That’s intrusive. You want to use the communication channels in non-intrusive ways. Second, collect contact info. When you run a get out the vote rally, find out if your voters like SMS, AIM, or email for mobile communication, and get the info you need to send messages via the preferred method. Third, don’t overuse it. Election day, you betcha, send a message asking if they’ve voted yet (and when they reply, mark down the answer; it’s all automatable). Do it again before the polls close, for those who didn’t say “yeah, I voted.” Maybe a few messages here and there in the week before to keep buzz going.

Use messaging more heavily for the activists. Definitely use it on election day. If your poll monitors don’t have some way to take a picture and transmit it back to HQ instantly, you’re missing a big bet — you want to be able to get the word out as quickly as possible if something happens.

Betcha none of this happens by 2004.

Gephardt’s in, which is somehow deeply unexciting news. Ah, bah; it’s good to have a traditionally Democratic candidate in the field. In theory, I’d like to see candidates in both sets of primaries from all over the political maps. I must try and be less cynical.

Course, that means I’d rather see Bernie Sanders than Howard Dean as the candidate from Vermont.

Eric Raymond’s just published another internal memo from Microsoft. (Hint: the fisking doesn’t improve your credibility, Eric.) I recommend skipping over the snide commentary, because it’s actually neither that clever or that interesting. Read it for what it says about Microsoft’s belief about where it stands vis a vis nation states, and perhaps reread this post of mine in which I discuss the role of NGOs in the new world order.